The Buckingham Experience

It is a rainy day. You cannot possibly lay on the couch and watch episodes of My Name Is Earl any longer. You decide that today is the day you visit Buckingham Palace.

You take the Tube to Green Park and trudge through it, trying not to curse the weather as the light rain blows in every direction including up your nose. You try to think of happier days spent in Green Park sitting in the sunshine on its thick, springy grass, eating custard-filled donuts from Patisserie Valerie.



You arrive at the Palace Gates and assume that the crowd there is doing the usual thing of trying to photograph the Beefeaters guards. Except that today there are an awful lot of police guards, even the kind on horseback. You try not to curse the weather, and go about getting the usual touristy photo of a guard or two.



All of a sudden, the gates burst open! Marching music fills the air! (The Grand Old Duke of York or something like that). There are not just two guards, there are hundreds!



Hundreds of marching guards playing music!

You manage to forget about the weather for at least three seconds as the guards march off into the distance, followed by a trail of tourists not dissimilar to the children following the Pied Piper.



Then your hands turn red and your lips get numb and you hustle onward to the next tourist location on the list.